Movies & TV

Patience is definitely a virtue for Fayetteville, North Carolina’s J. Cole. In the eleventh hour of putting together his forthcoming Roc Nation debut, Cole World: The Sideline Story (Sept. 27), the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.

“I knew Jay was gonna be on [that song]. I knew he was going to do that. I knew as soon as we made it [like] ‘Watch Jay get on this,’ Cole tells VIBE of his long awaited Hov collaboration “Mr. Nice Watch.”

Although, this wasn’t the original track young Jermaine hoped Jay would lay vocals on. At the time of recording, Cole presented his mentor with another track by the name of “God’s Gift. “

“Everything worked out, I’m a true believer that everything happens for a reason. Like, when he did that, it made way more sense than my song. It’s a bigger record, a more universal record,” he continued. “Being the hip-hop nerd that I am, I would have loved to hear Jay-Z on that ["God's Gift"] beat. But really, I’m fine on that song alone. “

The twenty-six-year-old spitta says he wasn’t able to witness Jiggaman bless his track. In fact, the end result came when he had all but lost hope for the dream collaboration.

“He was in L.A. and I got [there] that day around the VMAs or whatever. He actually pushed back the mastering, we went to mastering with no Jay-Z verse. I was like ‘oh okay cool, I guess he can’t do it,’ Cole told VIBE.

“They were mastering the last song, and this is such a Jay-Z move, he called in and stopped the mastering and pushed it back like a week. Only he can do that. ”

As for his track “God’s Gift,” Cole revealed another MC’s name he wanted to pull last minute.

“Yeah, I was trying to do a last minute Nas thing but I couldn’t. I didn’t have enough time, and then I laid a new verse on the slot I saved for Jay but I ended up not liking it. So I ended up keeping it two verses. It’s cool, it still worked out.”